That balance began to unravel as the world rebuilt, manufacturing moved out of its traditional bases, and labor shifted from industry to service without a corresponding shift of service to unionized workplaces.
The Boomers' attitude towards work is shaped by experiencing the benefits of the closest the US came to strong labor representation and national-level socialism, if not outright communism.
401K's, Pension funds, and other funds of funds that since WWII have pushed the business cycle from being a 5 year + picture to being a Quarterly Earnings report
That more than anything has had the biggest impact on what the parent comment is talking about
Taking care of employee requires the need to be able to look at the long term viability of the company, and understand that experienced work force is far more valuable than not.
However, when you are measuring your performance in 1 quarter goals no on give a shit about profitability in 5 years or how to service the customer in 5 years, that is the next CEO's problem
> There has been an erosion and change in the nature of an employee-employer relationship.
This however, is correct. I believe the cause is counterintuitive. Workers simply have more choice today.
For the last five years (excluding a brief hiccup during the worst of COVID lockdowns) demand for workers has outstripped supply. Low earners can choose between ultra-flexible gig work (Uber, etc) or endless less flexible options. Knowledge workers/tech have enjoyed a hot market where recruiters largely come to them once. The result of this? Average tenure at companies is decreasing. There is always a better opportunity around the corner. Why work hard at your current role for a 10% raise (at best) when you can focus on improving your interview skills and get a 30% raise at the next company?
Young people aren't "quiet quitting", they're just no longer subject to the Stockholm syndrome workers have exhibited over the last 20 years. They realize that maximizing their income means gaining 18 months of experience and moving on. If companies want to get 100% effort out of their employees, they should make sure that internal opportunities are as good as, if not better than, external opportunities.
But for how long, I ask? There is now a pretty strong tendency to get people back to the office. It may seem like trying to turn back the clock, or put the genie back into the bottle, but in these times of economic downturn, I guess they figure they have a chance of succeeding...
It's not. Look beyond the HN bubble. Where applicable, hybrid is the status quo, and hybrid is still a far cry from complete WFH. Traffic jams certainly speak of the opposite.
As long as most individuals are limited by their location regardless of legal issues, WFH is not widespread.
>Working hours are more flexible than ever.
Marginally. Most places still have core business hours and soft-enforce synchronicity. A lot of this also happens naturally thanks to pushing daily standups or whatever the equivalent is in another branch around the late morning, in a way that requires participants to look presentable.
>Workplace benefits have improved drastically over the last 10 years
Eeh.. questionable, really depends on the context. And that's without mentioning the obvious: benefits exempted from tax vs straight cash.
>Percentage of workers with access to maternity/paternity leave is increasing year-over-year.
True, with the obvious caveat that one-and-a-half income households are practically required to even start a family now. Those benefits are primarily a countermeasure to the issue of having any of the two parents spend time with kids, and paternity leave in particular tackles the "issue" of moms quitting work.
>Knowledge workers/tech have enjoyed a hot market where recruiters largely come to them once.
I fail to see how you make this conclusion. The service industry exploded and with them, recruiters. Recruiters got to eat too. It's nigh on zero effort to cold call or post something, either directed or undirected. Alternatives exist, but the culture of recruiters as middlemen has firmly taken root. Even managers tend to complain about their existence.
Meanwhile, job ads have noticeably blown up in demands over the past few decades. Every job went from requiring a bachelor if not a master, when most individuals could do with a few months and proper documentation. On top of that we have YoE for starters (wtf) and a giant wishlist of skills with no rhyme or reason. Despite your claim of demand and supply, competition is far more fierce than before, with popular companies getting their ridiculous wish list job ads blown up.
Yeah because you don't have an office anymore.
If I could have a job with a private office where I could close the door, have peace and quiet, and open the window as I wished, and I had a manager who simply gave me tasks to solve, like our parents had, I would also never quit and work there for 35 years. The working environment and conditions today are terrible in comparison, and people insisting to work from home is probably mostly a symptom of that.
I got a pair of Sony WH-1000XM5's and they're like magic. Lightweight, incredibly comfortable, and the active noise canceling is like getting transported into another reality.
It's the first pair of headphones I've been able to wear for a full 10-hour flight and never feel uncomfortable.
I work not in dev but in the operations side of IT, and for system administration and help desk there has been a DRAMATIC shift away from WFH job offers, 8mos ago I would say 80% of the admin jobs I saw posted were remote... today that is less than 50%
Well, this isn't that new, either - this was the plot of the 1999 movie "Office Space".
I feel like these "take advantage of the system people" are partially the cause of stricter monitoring and leeway.
But these people are so obviously detected it makes no sense. They are not even trying to hide. They could be the cause of stricter legislation, not monitoring.
I think everyone has a good measure about the value of the people they are directly in contact: direct coworkers, bosses and subordinates. You can ask other people when in doubt. I'm not claiming this solves every problem, my point is that monitoring is usually completely unnecessary and creates an oppressive atmosphere.
Why would they try to hide? If their employment agreement or their company's benefits clearly spell out a way to get 6-24 months of leave, how is it wrong to simply choose to do what's spelled out? How did "making use of benefits that are clearly written out and allowed" turn into "taking advantage of the system"?
I take advantage of 100% my company's 401(k) match. Am I taking advantage of the system? How about someone who takes their full maternity leave? Should too many people who do so be a cause of stricter legislation?
As for sick days, a sane company should have insurance for those cases (to cover for people being sick).
It's not like you're scamming the system...
Tying private health care to employment really creates some odd situations.
The people I know that do this use the time and money for a full time vacation as they travel the world. I am not sure public or private healthcare should fund people's (mental health) vacations.
It's the company's job to create a long term culture. If anything people who can hide bad stuff for 18 months then get a 30% pay raise are simply optimizing for the reward mechanisms in front of them.
Now the “Mills” and “Zs” get to enter the workforce after decades of neoliberalism. Employers are no longer “nice” and “fair”. Not because they are worse people but because they don’t have to be.
[1] This Swiss website uses American pop-sociological concepts for some reason.
Is this accurate, or nostalgia?
Back in the day that the author initially started working, the nature of the relationship was probably much more balanced: the employee got a decent wage, was trusted to fulfil their duties with reasonable concessions and freedom (sometimes possibly doing overtime if necessary, but also being able to leave early on days when they had to take care of their kid), and they probably had much better implicit labor protections: in the event of economic downturns, the company was much more accommodating and tried its best to take care of the employee. In other words, the employer was trusted and the employee was trusted to "take care of each other". The job was "for life", after all.
Fast forward to these days: companies have stripped away a lot of the care they took for employees; in the event of economic issues, big corps will fire people basically at random. Most employees are monitored to the minute, and leeway from the employer is unheard of in most situations. All of this "taking care of your employees when things go awry" is expensive (like insurance) and employers have tightened their belts.
It's not surprising then that the employer also starts looking for ways of not doing more than they are contractually obliged to do.
It is mostly about the erosion of trust both ways.